mcp-server-dash

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that provides tools to interact with the Dash documentation browser API.

Dash 8 is required. You can download Dash 8 at https://blog.kapeli.com/dash-8.

Overview

The Dash MCP server provides tools for accessing and searching documentation directly from Dash, the macOS documentation browser. MCP clients can:

• List installed docsets
• Search across docsets and code snippets
• Fetch documentation content via Dash load URLs (with pagination)
• Enable full-text search for specific docsets

Notice

This is a work in progress. Any suggestions are welcome!

Tools

1. list_installed_docsets
   • Lists all installed documentation sets in Dash
2. search_documentation
   • Searches across docsets and snippets
3. fetch_documentation
   • Fetches raw documentation content using the load_url from search results (supports chunking for large pages)
4. enable_docset_fts
   • Enables full-text search for a specific docset

Resources

• dash://server-info — server runtime/config info (JSON)

Requirements

• macOS (required for Dash app)
• Dash installed
• Python 3.11.4 or higher
• uv

Server configuration

Environment variables for the server process:

• DASH_MCP_TRANSPORT: stdio (default), sse, or streamable-http
• DASH_MCP_HOST: bind address (default 127.0.0.1)
• DASH_MCP_PORT: bind port (default 8000)
• DASH_MCP_LOG_LEVEL: DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR, CRITICAL
• DASH_MCP_HTTP_COMPAT: true/false (default true) - relaxes Accept checks and prefers JSON/stateless HTTP
• DASH_MCP_JSON_RESPONSE: true/false (default true when DASH_MCP_HTTP_COMPAT is on)
• DASH_MCP_STATELESS_HTTP: true/false (default true when DASH_MCP_HTTP_COMPAT is on)
• DASH_MCP_DNS_REBINDING: true/false (default false)
• DASH_MCP_ALLOWED_HOSTS: comma-separated Host header allowlist
• DASH_MCP_ALLOWED_ORIGINS: comma-separated Origin allowlist
• DASH_MCP_SHUTDOWN_TIMEOUT: graceful shutdown timeout in seconds (default 3)
• DASH_MCP_KEEP_ALIVE_TIMEOUT: keep-alive timeout in seconds (optional)
• DASH_MCP_HTTP_LOG: true/false (default false) - log incoming HTTP JSON-RPC bodies
• DASH_MCP_HTTP_LOG_MAX: max log length for HTTP bodies (default 2000)
• DASH_MCP_SSE_CLIENT_TTL: seconds to prefer SSE for clients that opened GET /mcp (default 60)
• DASH_MCP_PREFER_SSE: true/false (default false) - prefer SSE when client accepts both JSON and SSE
• DASH_MCP_SSE_CLIENT_NAMES: comma-separated client names (from initialize) that should prefer SSE responses
• DASH_MCP_DASH_BASE_URL: override host/port used in returned Dash load_url values (e.g. http://host:port)
• DASH_MCP_DOC_CHUNK_BYTES: default max bytes returned by fetch_documentation (default 120000)
• DASH_MCP_DOC_CHUNK_MAX_BYTES: hard cap for fetch_documentation max bytes (default 1000000)
• DASH_MCP_ALLOWED_DASH_HOSTS: comma-separated allowlist for load_url hosts (* to allow any; default: 127.0.0.1,localhost,::1)

If you set DASH_MCP_ALLOWED_HOSTS or DASH_MCP_ALLOWED_ORIGINS, DNS rebinding protection is enabled automatically unless DASH_MCP_DNS_REBINDING=false. Use * in either allowlist to disable the check and allow any host/origin. When DASH_MCP_HTTP_COMPAT is enabled, the server accepts POST requests that only declare Accept: application/json, suppresses session IDs by default, and prefers JSON responses over SSE to improve client compatibility. It also accepts legacy method names like listResources/listTools and maps them to the MCP spec names. For no-params methods, empty list or empty string params are normalized to {}. If a client opens GET /mcp, the server can prefer SSE responses for that client for a short time window when DASH_MCP_PREFER_SSE=true. You can also force SSE for specific clients by setting DASH_MCP_SSE_CLIENT_NAMES to their clientInfo.name values (e.g. mcp-router).

dash://server-info includes a build section with code_sha256 and git_commit to help identify exactly which server build is running.

Configuration

Using uvx

brew install uv

in claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
      "dash-api": {
          "command": "uvx",
          "args": [
              "--from",
              "git+https://github.com/Kapeli/dash-mcp-server.git",
              "dash-mcp-server"
          ]
      }
  }
}

in Claude Code

claude mcp add dash-api -- uvx --from "git+https://github.com/Kapeli/dash-mcp-server.git" "dash-mcp-server"